She took a tentative step toward him. Stopped. Conflict sat on her shoulders as she carefully considered her next words.

Who was she kidding? There was no careful to be had here. He was either going to understand, once and for all, that his burgeoning Dominant was one of the best things that had happened to their relationship, or he’d choose to dive back in to his self-condemnation. She refused to stick around for that sight anymore.

“I don’t think you turned out so bad, Garrett.”

“Really?” As she half expected, he wheeled back around. His shoulders were stiff and his face was gaunt. “You don’t think so, huh? Well, isn’t that special.”

Had she been tempted to hold him a second ago? “It should be special,” she snapped. “I’m your fiancée. Does that count for anything anymore?”

He snorted. “Don’t you get it? After so many years of swearing I wouldn’t be like Wyatt, that I wouldn’t become him, that I’d be better than him at handling my shit…and yet I’ve tromped down the same damn path as him.” His lips twisted. “The only thing I didn’t fuck up was letting some starry-eyed kid get obsessed with me, only to have their hero fall and crumble as they watched.”

Sage dug her nails into her palms. Gazing at him was torment. It was worse than watching him get beat up, because he was the one doing the damage. And nothing she said could make him stop.

“You’re right,” she rasped. “On one thing. There’s no kid this time. But there is someone here who calls you hero.”

He blinked, clearly understanding her. And clearly not happy with that. Tough beans, Hawkins. You’re going to listen to this.

“You think it’s just a cute catch phrase for me, Garrett? You think it’s something I don’t believe with all my heart? Still?” She couldn’t stand the distance anymore. In two steps, she pressed herself against him. She looked up and spread a hand to the side of his head. “And no, you haven’t crumbled. Dear God, in this moment, you’re more strong and amazing to me than ever. You’re my hero in a million more senses. Confronting your truth takes as much guts as facing insurgent fire or an enemy grenade.” She smiled. “Or a slimebag in a jungle, selling women into slavery.”

His eyes went stunningly wide. In their blue fire, Sage caught the intensity of real horror. “Shit, Sage!”

He tried to turn away. She grabbed him harder. “No,” she pleaded. “Don’t close me out, damn it! Don’t run from this, Garrett. Don’t run from us.”

He curled his hands around the backs of her elbows. His fingertips pumped against her skin, keeping time to the hard breaths attacking his chest. “Sage.” He dipped his face, every cliff and valley of his features etched in the agony of a new creature bursting from its chrysalis. “I love you so much.”

“And I love you.” She flattened her hands to the ridges that defined his lower torso. “But right now, I also need you.” Using his body for balance, she slid downward. Then down even more. She didn’t speak again until she was in a full kneel, her head dropped between her upstretched arms. Just getting to that position made her mind shift into another place, where peace and power mixed together in a beautiful ambrosia. The elixir spread through her body, igniting her nerve endings, feeding the pulsing need in the deepest tissues of her sex. “I need to give it all to you, my hero. My body. My heart. My power. Take them. Use them to transport me. To transport you. You have all of me, Garrett. Everything.”

She was hyperaware of every part of his reaction. The tremors in his thighs shaking like the tree he’d pinned her to this afternoon. The breath entering and exiting his body like whooshes of a wind storm. The sound that vibrated up his throat, rough and tortured, as he stroked the top of her head.

“You really want this?” His growl was part savoring predator, part intent lover. Oh God, that voice. If that was what the devil sounded like when he’d approached Faust, she didn’t blame the guy for inking the deal on his soul.

“Yes.” She got the word out on a dry whisper.

His grip on her head changed. By slow degrees, he tightened and twisted until he had her more by the hair instead of her scalp. “Tell me again, sweet sugar.”

Oh, God. The growl that took over his voice… It belonged to the same beautiful, dark creature he’d untethered that first night back in Bangkok. Between that tone and the increasing torque of his hold, her skin began to tingle and her heart began to soar.

“Yes, Sir. I want this.”

Another rough sound rolled across his chest. The creature in him was assessing her. Mentally prowling around her. Approving her.

Sage sighed in bliss. To know she was doing this for him, giving him this dynamic that his soul and his body had craved for so long…she was joyous—floating.

He jerked harder on her hair. Her sigh turned into a sharp cry. She held nothing back from him, and it felt amazing. After a year of checking every move she made and controlling every sound she emitted, this freedom was a miracle. A gift. No more editing herself. No more worrying if anything was right or wrong, or too loud or too needy…

Garrett brought his other hand up to her head. When he had her braced in his dual grip, he pressed her face into the apex of his thighs. Sage bit hungrily at the fabric, reveling in how the ridge beneath his khakis jumped and surged for her. As his hold coiled tighter, she whimpered higher.

Until the next second, when he pulled back with a harsh grunt. He wheeled away and spat the F-word like it was going to get pulled from the world’s lexicon forever.

Her heart dove back into her stomach. Searing heat invaded the back of her eyes. She fell back to her heels, shaky and unsteady.

Dead end.

Again.

Garrett locked white knuckles to the mantle. Sage curled similar fists into her lap. They remained that way through interminable minutes, frozen at opposite ends of the rug that might as well have turned into a chasm, in a silence just as deep and divisive.

The doorbell rang.

Garrett threw a questioning glance to her. Sage shook her head. Neither of them was expecting anyone. She rose, wiping her cheeks as she did, and joined Garrett as he went to the door.

“Surprise!”

The couple on the front stoop exclaimed in unison when Garrett opened the door. The woman’s pixie-like features were enhanced by a cute contemporary style of her black hair. The man was at least a foot-and-a-half taller than her and looked so much like a bearded version of Garrett that an outsider would’ve taken him as Garrett’s dad. But he wasn’t.

The tension in Garrett’s body tripled inside ten seconds. Sage was proud of him for forcing a smile and extending his hand in greeting.

“Uncle Wyatt.”

Chapter Thirteen

The last time Garrett had been this uncomfortable, the squad was on recon in an alley in Aleppo, and they’d spent the night getting silently sized up by a group of local kids. They’d had to consider every damn move they made, turned into star specimens on one of life’s stranger petri dishes, whether they liked it or not.

Wyatt was giving him the same spare-no-details scrutiny.

The man hid it better than the Syrian kids, but Garrett felt every turn of the man’s mental focus knob just as acutely. To anyone else, he simply appeared a proud uncle shooting the shit with his nephew in front of the backyard fire pit, sipping on a beer, enjoying the sunset. It was a fa?ade and they both knew it. Garrett was pretty damn sure that if he asked, the man could tell him exactly how many egrets were out on the water, as well as which ones were there for food and which ones were trolling for a hump.

God only knew what specifics Wyatt had gathered about him in the moments he’d been too stunned to watch his composure. After the initial shock of their greeting, Sage had welcomed the couple inside. The second the door was shut, Wyatt pulled him into a gruff guy hug—the first heartfelt contact he’d had from the man in ten years. The move shaved off that much time from his spirit too. For a few awesome minutes, he was a Wyatt-worshipping puppy again, showing the man around their place, bragging about the new grill he’d put in himself, which was filled with cobwebs because he hadn’t used the thing in the last year. What would’ve been the point?